In a world headed towards self-driving cars, we aren’t TOO far removed from this future, actually.

And if your goal is to avoid romance altogether, just immerse yourself in One Piece. There aren’t any robots, but they did say that there isn’t any romance officially scheduled in the storyline either, because that’s “just not what they think their audience wants”. Hey, if the creator says so, it must be true. Perfect!

You can also watch Pacific Rim and Voltron if you’re looking for non-romantic robot stories, but you aren’t restricting yourself to Anime. (We’ll talk about where both franchises got their inspiration from some other time.)

The sudden return of The Baron from “Whisper of the Heart”. (In case you are charmed by his presence in the above movie.)

Compare/contrast with The Velveteen Rabbit.

(Most of the above are fairly Hetero-Normative romances, but I’ll try to cover Yaoi and Yuri romances in a later update. If you’re highly interested in those genres, I would recommend Revolutionary Girl Utena, after checking out Sailor Moon.)

Happy Valentine’s Day for those who celebrate, and Happy Nirvana day for those who don’t!